SANTA ROSA — Amid the euphoria of this weekend’s famed Emerald Cup weed fest, there was this creeping buzzkill: the glacial rollout of legalization.

Right when it seems like “The Great Pot Moment” is upon us, it turns out there are a lot of really tough regulatory issues to resolve first, according to government and industry experts who sketched out all the thorny challenges at the two-day conference, competition and harvest celebration at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.

And implementation of commercialization could be delayed a year until 2019, said insiders.

Proposition 64, approved by voters in November, promised that, by Jan. 1, 2018, a recreational smoker could stroll into a licensed store to buy a favorite strain of White Widow or OJ Kush. A medical marijuana law, the Medical Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act, is moving along a similar timeline.

For the 23,000 cannabis aficionados at the festival, even that wait seems unreasonably long, considering people have been weaving hemp into loincloths for thousands of years.

In an Emerald Cup tradition, the judges of the annual cannabis contest toss joints out to an enthusiastic crowd. Lisa M. Krieger

What’s the challenge? Just as the prohibition on cannabis was complicated, so is the process of ending it, experts said.

Lisa M. Krieger is a science writer at The Mercury News, covering research, scientific policy and environmental news from Stanford University, the University of California, NASA-Ames, U.S. Geological Survey and other Bay Area-based research facilities. Lisa also contributes to the Videography team. She graduated from Duke University with a degree in biology. Outside of work, she enjoys photography, backpacking, swimming and bird-watching.

"The easy part is buying the body cameras and issuing them to the officers. They are not that expensive," said Jim Pasco, executive director at the National Fraternal Order of Police. "But storing all the data that they collect - that cost is extraordinary. The smaller the department, the tougher it tends to be for them."